Short Investment Horizons Research Articles

A PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF DOLLAR-COST AVERAGING AND SELF-ANNUITIZATION

The return and risk of dollar-cost averaging (DCA) and self-annuitization (SA) investing are compared with the underlying return in this paper. The underlying return, which is assumed to be normally distributed, is generated by Monte Carlo simulations under six market scenarios including upward and mean reverting markets across several investment horizons. Owing to the multiple cash flows of DCA and SA, the annual internal rate of return is used to measure the DCA and SA returns. The results show that the mean return of DCA is slightly higher than the underlying return, while the SA is lower, particularly under short investment horizons. Both DCA and SA produce higher return volatility and riskiness than the underlying return. They also create negative skewness and excess kurtosis for the return distributions. For comparing their performances, we use the economic performance measure which can consider those high moments of distribution. Except for the mean reverting market, the underlying return is the best performer, while SA is the worst. This evidence becomes even clearer and convincing as the investment horizon increases. DCA can have lower riskiness and perform better only under the mean reverting market.

Stock Market Rumors and Credibility

Abstract Stock prices occasionally move in response to unverified rumors. I propose a cheap talk model in which a rumormonger’s incentives to tell the truth depend on the interaction between her investment horizon and the information acquisition decisions of message-receiving investors. The model’s key prediction is that short investment horizons can facilitate credible information sharing between investors, thereby accelerating the information capitalization into market prices. Analyzing a data set of takeover rumors covered by U.S. newspapers, I find suggestive evidence in support of this prediction. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Real Estate in Mixed-Asset Portfolios for Various Investment Horizons

In this article, the authors investigate the role of real estate in a mixed-asset portfolio for various investment horizons and notably extend the literature by considering together direct real estate, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and nonlisted real estate funds, as well as other alternative investments. Using US data spanning almost three decades, they report that medium- to long-term investors should allocate 10% to 20% of their portfolio to direct real estate. In contrast, short-term investors should focus on open-end core funds, which are found to be good substitutes for direct investments. REITs are usually of limited interest as a substitute for direct real estate, but they could be used in conjunction with direct investments for medium- and long-term horizons. Value-added and opportunistic closed-end funds are found to be imperfect substitutes for direct investments and are only marginally used. Finally, the authors find that including commodities, private equity, and hedge funds in a portfolio enhances the portfolio’s performance but the allocation to real estate barely changes. TOPICS:Statistical methods, real estate, risk management, portfolio construction Key Findings • Allocation to direct real estate is null until a 2.5-year investment horizon, due to high transaction costs, but increases rapidly up to 20% for a 25-year investment horizon. • Core nonlisted funds are excellent substitutes for direct real estate investments, which is very useful for short investment horizons. • Including other alternative asset classes in the portfolio is useful, but this does not reduce the allocation to real estate.

Interest Rates and Institutional Investors’ Preferences for Risk

We analyze the effect of different interest rate environments on the institutional investors’ preferences towards risk using data on their holdings from 13f filings. We find strong empirical evidence for the predictions Rajan (2006) on how different interest rate characteristics affect institutional investors’ preferences for risk. First, in low interest rate environment, institutional investors prefer riskier stocks, especially those with higher systematic, rather than idiosyncratic, risk. Second, institutional investors migrate to stocks with high systematic and medium idiosyncratic risk in decreasing interest rate environments. Third, decreases in the interest rate level have statistically and economically more important effects on institutional investors’ preferences towards risk than increases in the interest rate level. Fourth, the persistence or volatility of interest rate do not seem to affect institutional investors’ preferences for stocks with different risk characteristics. Fifth, long term interest rate expectations do not significantly alter institutional investors’ preferences toward risk. These results hold for quasi-indexers and dedicated investors but not for transient investors due to their shorter investment horizons.

The Effect of Capital Gains Tax Policy Changes on Long-Term Investments

Pressure from short-horizon investors can hurt investments in innovative, long-run value-increasing projects. We explore the efficacy of a commonly proposed tax-based policy tool to mitigate this problem: the imposition of differentially greater taxes on short-term capital gains vis-a-vis long-term capital gains. Using a panel of 30 OECD countries in which seven countries exhibit 21 shocks to differential capital gains taxation over 1991-2006, we find that rewarding longer-term ownership through lower taxes is associated with greater innovation. The evidence adds to our understanding of the real effects of taxation on investor trading and should be of interest to lawmakers and regulators.

Who Reacts to News?

We show that the positive relation between firm-level cash-flow news and institutional ownership documented by [Cohen et al., Journal of Financial Economics 66, 409–462.] is mostly driven by short-horizon investors. Short-term institutions trade to incorporate cash-flow related information into prices and potentially reduce under-reaction to cash-flow news. In contrast, long-term institutions are more sensitive to discount-rate news, consistent with the idea that their strategy is to realize the long-term expected returns and that they care more about changes in their opportunity set. Our results support the premise that short- and long-horizon institutions are potentially trading with each other based on their opposing preferences for news.

Institutional Investor Horizon and Firm Valuation Around the World

Using a comprehensive dataset of firms from 34 countries, we study the effect of institutional investors’ investment horizons on firm valuation around the world. We find a positive relation between institutional ownership and firm value that is driven by short-horizon institutional investors. Accounting for the interaction between investors’ investment horizon and nationality, we show that foreign short-horizon institutions, which are more likely to discipline managers through the threat of exit rather than engaging in monitoring made costly by the liability of foreignness, are the investor group with the strongest effect on firm value. Reinforcing the threat of exit channel, we find that the value-enhancing effect of short-horizon investors is stronger in the presence of multiple short-horizon investors, who are more likely to engage in competitive trading. The positive valuation effect of short-horizon investors is stronger when stock liquidity is high, which makes the exit threat more credible, and in firms prone to free cash flows agency problems. Overall, our results are consistent with short-horizon institutional investors, especially foreign institutional owners, affecting firm value by disciplining managers through credible threats of exit.

Optimal ETF Portfolios for Different Objectives and Horizons

This study identifies optimal portfolios for investors with different objectives and horizons, usinginvestable exchange-traded funds of major asset classes. The optimal portfolios offer much higher Sharpe ratios than the market portfolio. Only three funds representing corporate bonds, NASDAQ 100 index, and gold contribute to the optimal portfolios. Since short investment horizons are examined, most of the optimal portfolios invest mainly in corporate bonds. However, the optimal portfolios with market volatility invest mostly in the NASDAQ 100 index. As the only asset with normally distributed returns, gold participates in optimal portfolios for investors concerned about negative skewness and excess kurtosis.

Indirect Insider Trading

Insiders must disclose indirect trades made through accounts they control, including family, trust, retirement, and foundation accounts. Indirect trades through these accounts are more profitable than direct trades in the insider’s own account. They are also more likely to be made by ‘opportunistic’ insiders who make non-routine trades, or who trade profitably before earnings announcements, or have a short investment horizon. These trades contain more predictive information about earnings surprises and large price changes, and they tend to be made by insiders at firms with high information asymmetry. Insiders also make fewer indirect trades following periods of intense regulatory scrutiny.

Savior or Villain? The Debt-Market Effects of Foreign Institutional Ownership

This paper examines the impact of foreign institutional ownership on debt contracting. Using a sample of international syndicated loans extended to non-U.S. borrowers, we find that lenders demand more debt covenants when borrowers have a higher proportion of equity held by U.S. foreign institutions, especially those with a short investment horizon. These findings are more pronounced in countries with weaker creditor rights, where lenders rely more on contract-level protection. We find corroborating results using the U.S. Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act as an exogenous shock to U.S. institutional ownership. These findings suggest that lenders view U.S. foreign shareholders as exacerbating expropriation risk. Further analysis suggests that expropriation arises from borrowers’ risk-taking and covenants are effective at reducing such risk. Lastly, we find that U.S. institutions are more likely to participate in loans to borrowers with higher U.S. institutional ownership and their participation mitigates lenders’ concern for expropriation.

Welfare effects of information and rationality in portfolio decisions under parameter uncertainty

We analyse and quantify, in a financial market with parameter uncertainty and for a Constant Relative Risk Aversion investor, the utility effects of two different boundedly rational (i.e. sub-optimal) investment strategies (namely, myopic and unconditional strategies) and compare them with each other and with the utility effect of full information. We show that effects are mainly caused by full information and predictability, being the effect of learning marginal. We also investigate the saver's decision regarding whether to manage her/his portfolio personally (DIY investor) or hire, against the payment of a management fee, a professional investor and find that delegation is mainly motivated by the belief that professional advisors are, depending on investment horizon and risk aversion, either better informed (‘insiders’) or more capable of gathering and processing information, rather than possessing the ability to learn from financial data. In particular, for very short investment horizons, delegation is primarily, if not exclusively, motivated by the beliefs that professional investors are better informed.

Term Structure(s) of the Equity Risk Premium

By simultaneously using dividend and variance swap data, we show how the term structure of the equity risk premium varies over time and how its shape is affected by liquidity risk premia. The term structure is always positively sloped, while funding liquidity premia and betas explain the high unconditional returns for all dividend claims. Alphas for short-dated dividend claims are actually negative implying that their returns are too low, whereas alphas for long-dated claims seem to be positive. The term structure slope varies positively with the market risk premium, but it is never negative relative to the first contract -- due to the nearly zero risk premium in the first maturity -- and rarely hump-shaped in some empirical models. We show how the maturity term structure -- the risk premium for dividend strips with different maturities -- is connected to both the horizon term structure -- linked to the variance swap term structure -- and various funding liquidity measures. The risk premium is on average increasing with investment horizon, while the maturity risk premium depends primarily on the short-horizon risk premium, implying that short-horizon investors are the marginal ones. All our results hold in the US, the UK, Europe and Japan.

Fractality in market risk structure: Dow Jones Industrial components case

We examine the Dow Jones Industrial Average index components with respect to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), specifically its scaling properties in the sense of different investment horizons. To do so, we use the novel methods of fractal regressions based on the detrended cross-correlation analysis and the detrending moving-average cross-correlation analysis. We report three standard groups of stocks – aggressive, defensive and market-following – which are rather uniformly represented. For most of the stocks, the β parameter of the CAPM does not vary significantly across scales. There are two groups of exceptions. One of aggressive stocks which are even more aggressive for short investment horizons. These do not provide portfolio diversification benefits but allow for high profits above the market returns and even more so for the short investment horizons. And the other group of more defensive stocks which become very defensive in the long term. These stocks do not deliver short term profits but can serve as strong risk diversifiers. Apart from these direct results, our analysis opens several interesting questions and future research directions, both technical and experimental, which we discuss in more detail.

DOES STOCK MISPRICING AFFECT THE CORPORATE INVESTMENT DECISIONS? EVIDENCE FROM CATERING EFFECT

Current study finds out the effect of stock mispricing, through catering effect, on corporate investment decisions by taking the sample of firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange during the period of 2007-2014. This study uses the methodology of Rhodes-Kropf et al (2005) to measure the stock mispricing who used market to book decomposition methodology to find out different components of mispricing and relate it to corporate investment activity that is measured by capital expenditures. Stockholder investment horizon is measured by share turnover ratio. Panel regression methodology is used to determine the relationship between stock mispricing and corporate investment decisions. Results of the study show that Firms with short horizon investors have significantly higher mispricing sensitivity than the firms with long horizon shareholder. Both sides of mispricing affect the investment but the impact of overvaluation is more than undervaluation because the firms issue shareholder equity more than stock repurchase.

Dependence structures between Chinese stock markets and the international financial market: Evidence from a wavelet-based quantile regression approach

In this study, we investigate the dependence structures between six Chinese stock markets and the international financial market including possible safe haven assets and global economic factors under different market conditions and investment horizons. The research is conducted by combining a quantile regression approach with a wavelet decomposition analysis. Although we find little or insignificant dependence under short investment horizons, we detect the strong asymmetric dependence of oil prices and the US dollar index on the six Chinese stock markets in the medium and long terms. Moreover, not only is crude oil not a safe haven, it may damage Chinese stock markets as it increases over the long term, even in bull markets. Meanwhile, appreciation of the US dollar (depreciation of RMB) damages (boosts) Chinese stock markets during bull (bear) market conditions under long investment horizons. Moreover, we find that VIX (volatility index)-related derivatives may serve as good risk management tools under any market condition, while gold is a safe haven asset only during crisis periods.

Exploring the dynamic relationships between cryptocurrencies and other financial assets

We analyse, in the time and frequency domains, the relationships between three popular cryptocurrencies and a variety of other financial assets. We find evidence of the relative isolation of these assets from the financial and economic assets. Our results show that cryptocurrencies may offer diversification benefits for investors with short investment horizons. Time variation in the linkages reflects external economic and financial shocks.

Adapting to Radical Change: The Benefits of Short-Horizon Investors

We show that firms with more short-term institutional investors have better long-term performance in dynamic economic environments. Following exogenous increases in competitive pressure due to large cuts of import tariff rates, firms with more short-term investors achieve higher growth rates of sales and employees in comparison to other firms in the industries affected by the tariff cuts. To do so, these firms invest more in fixed assets, R&D, and advertising, and differentiate their products from those of the competitors. Firms with more short-term investors also conduct more diversifying acquisitions and have higher executive turnover in the aftermath of large tariff cuts, suggesting that they put stronger effort in adapting their business to the new competitive environment. These results are not specific to tariff cuts but also robust to increases in competitive pressure due to deregulation shocks. Our findings suggest that firms with more short-horizon investors adapt more promptly to changing economic environments and highlight a potential benefit of short-horizon investors.

Why Do Large Investors Disclose Their Information?

Large investors often advertise private information at private talks or in the media. To analyse the incentives for information disclosure, I develop a two-period Kyle (1985) type model in which an informed short-horizon investor strategically discloses private information to enhance price efficiency. I show that information disclosure is optimal when the scope of private information is large and when the large investor has a high reputation. Short investment horizons induce information disclosure among investors and are beneficial for price efficiency. However, strategic information disclosure reduces trading before disclosure and harms price discovery.

Exploring the Dynamic Relationships between Cryptocurrencies and Other Financial Assets

We analyse, in the time and frequency domains, the relationships between three popular cryptocurrencies and a variety of other financial assets. We find evidence of the relative isolation of these assets from the financial and economic assets. Our results show that cryptocurrencies may offer diversification benefits for investors with short investment horizons. Time variation in the linkages reflects external economic and financial shocks.

Specialist versus generalist investors: Trading off support quality, investment horizon and control rights

We model an entrepreneur’s selection of either an active (specialist) or a passive (generalist) investor for an innovative venture that requires external equity for startup and expansion financing. We assume that the specialist investor provides better support but has a shorter investment horizon than the generalist. We particularly focus on the entrepreneur’s net present value (NPV)-maximizing contract, taking into account the specialist’s potential moral hazard. This latter might try selling his claim in a secondary transaction to an uninformed outside investor, even though the project is unsuccessful and should be abandoned. We show that the entrepreneur may trade off crucial contract parameters when seeking external financing. Either type of investor may be preferable, contingent on the allocation of control rights, the investor’s support quality and investment horizon, the chances of success, and the venture’s expected liquidation value.